Half my hair fell out two years ago, here’s what helped me grow it back

From iron supplements to rosemary oil, these are the steps I took to restore my crowning glory. 

I have always been an absolute princess about my hair (funny, considering how much of it is already grey). It’s long, thick and wavy, it holds a curl, and I generally love it. When I was first seeing an ex of mine, his cousin drove past us on Lygon Street and wanted to know who he was with. His phone lit up. “Who’s the girl with the hair?” You could say it’s my signature. 

So you can imagine my distress when a few summers ago, I realised it was falling out. The ends were ratty, it felt like straw and every wash left me with clumps and clumps on the shower wall (disgusting). I was panicking, especially when it didn’t let up for months. My ponytail was a shadow of its former self but I thought ‘thinning hair’ was for men booking strategic trips to Turkey, not for me. What was going on?

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Unfortunately, as is the case with so many annoying symptoms, I never fully found out. It could have been a post-Covid thing, it could have been stress, it could have been my truly pathetic iron levels and my too-frequent highlight appointments. It could’ve been a combination of these, plus any number of other factors I haven’t considered. My doctor said: “Hmmmm. Blood tests.”

Eventually, I came right but I’ll never 100 per cent know what made my hair so sad, and I’ll never know what brought it back. But I have my suspicions. These are the steps I took to restore my crowning glory. 

Get a ‘health cut’

When I look at photos from the first few months of 2022, I cringe. My hair was in bad shape but I hadn’t fully admitted it yet, so it was long but disastrously straggly and thin from the ears down. I hadn’t taken any serious length off my hair since a never-to-be-repeated pixie cut in 2009 but this was a desperate situation. I booked in for a real chop: shoulder-length with ’90s layers. It looked sensational, suddenly twice as thick and so much healthier. In the last two years, my hair has grown back to my mid-back but I get trims much more regularly than I used to, and my hair is better for it. Length is not the only metric of good hair, get it cut. 

Consider iron supplements for hair growth

Very very obviously, I am not a doctor and this is not medical advice. Supplements only do anything when you’re not getting what you need from your diet. They’re not silver bullets. But with all the table-setting aside, you might be deficient in iron and it might be affecting your hair. I’m pretty sure it was mine; the first time I got my iron checked, my ferritin score was 11. My doctor wants it above 50. I take tablets every other day (I find this helps with absorption) and my energy levels and hair growth are well above where they once were.

Correlation or causation? Great question, but as nutrition expert Steph Lowe points out, there very well could be a link. “When iron levels are low, the body prioritises essential functions over hair growth,” she says, meaning your hair slips down the body’s to-do list. I’ve also had good luck with collagen and biotin supplements. Talk to your doctor and see what’s what in your particular case. 

If you want longer hair, treat it right

Taking good, gentle care of your hair is also going to support it in its growth journey. I’m not particularly brand loyal – as a beauty writer of nearly a decade, I love to try things and I also think my hair enjoys a change. But I have a few suggestions, all of which I paid for myself. First up is the Kérastase Genesis (hair growth) range, eye-wateringly expensive at $57 for the shampoo and $62 for the conditioner, but so, so nice. These products work in three complementary ways; caring for your scalp so it has the best chance to grow new hair, protecting and strengthening your ends so you can hold onto existing hair, and providing light, airy volume to maximise what you’re working with. I haven’t tried the scalp serum because it’s $92 and out of my price range but unfortunately, I’m told it’s very much worth it. Instead, I treat my scalp once or twice a week to the Mielle Rosemary Mint Scalp and Hair Strengthening Oil, $17. It smells divine and seems to be working.

You know the rest of my advice for hair growth already: keep heat styling to a minimum, be gentle with your hair while brushing it, limit your exposure to salt water and chlorine, and stop bleaching your hair. None of that advice is especially glamorous, but neither is seeing clumps of your hair on the shower wall. Godspeed to you and your hair.  

For more on the causes of hair thinning and breakage, head here.